Gayle King has confessed that the rumors about her romantic involvement with close friend, Oprah Winfrey, were deeply upsetting.
The journalist, 71, addressed the decades-old speculation surrounding her friendship with Winfrey during Wednesday’s episode of Alex Cooper’s Call Her Daddy podcast.
“People literally to the point have made comments like, ‘There’s no way this isn’t a romantic relationship,’” Cooper said, referring to Winfrey and King. “Tell me how that feels when you guys have had to handle those headlines, handle those rumors.”
“Well, it used to really bother me. I was recently divorced. The National Enquirer did a story about that [being] the reason for the divorce, because they’re secretly gay,” the CBS Mornings host —who split from her ex-husband William Bumpus in 1993 — responded.
“Number one, if we were gay, we would tell you because, believe me, there’s nothing wrong with it. It’s just, I prefer a man,” King continued.
King said she urged Winfrey to shut the rumors down at the time, telling her, “You’ve got to say something on your show because it’s hard enough for me to get a date on a Saturday night, and now people think I’m a lesbian.”
However, the founder of the Oprah Winfrey Network argued that it was better to “leave it alone” rather than say something.
“Well, that’s fine for you to say, you have somebody, I don’t,” King recalled responding to Winfrey, who has been dating businessman Stedman Graham for 40 years.
After reiterating that the dating rumors “used to really bother” her, King said she no longer feels that way.
“Even today, there are still people that say, ‘Well, you know, the truth is…’” she continued. “I don’t care. I’ve now gotten to the point in my life that very few things get to me. Because when you go on social media, it is an accelerator on hate.
“As long as I feel good about what I’m doing, the people I respect and trust are OK with it — who will say, ‘Well, Mom, maybe you shouldn’t have done that,’ — or somebody whose opinion I value. Otherwise, you’ll drive yourself nuts. So now I really don’t care.”
The two TV hosts first met in 1976 while working at WJZ-TV in Baltimore, Maryland. Winfrey was co-anchor at the time, and King was a production assistant. Nearly 10 years later, King made her first appearance on The Oprah Winfrey Show for a segment on celebrity friendships.
Elsewhere in the Call Her Daddy episode, King was asked how she felt about critics pitting her and Winfrey against each other given their similar career paths.
“I say I never see myself in her shadow. I always say I see myself in her light, and I do mean that,” the Editor-at-Large aof Oprah Daily said about her friend. “I have never, not once thought, ‘God, I wish I could be her. I think I can do what she does,’ because I don’t believe that.”